From: bbiker <renard@...>
Date: 2007-05-22T00:40:04+09:00
Subject: Re: How to adopt "Python Style" indentation for Ruby

On May 21, 3:32 am, Brian Candler <B.Cand...@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 03:53:25PM +0900, Giles Bowkett wrote:
> > What would it take to write a Ruby pre-processor which parsed Ruby
> > written in a Pythonic style and turned it into actual valid Ruby? Or
> > even a Ruby library like Xavier's Perl example, which allows you to
> > code Ruby as if it were Python after just requiring the library? The
> > original post's main argument was that indentation is a stable,
> > consistent shorthand for Ruby's end statements. If all you're looking
> > to do is use tabs as syntactic sugar, then it should be pretty easy to
> > just write something which knows how to translate a sequence of tabs
> > in and tabs out into a series of end statements at the end.
>
> Actually, I'd happily settle for something simpler: a pretty-printer which
> just reads (normal) Ruby and re-outputs it with standard indentation.
>
> This would immediately solve the problem of "where did I miss out an 'end'
> statement?" - you'd just pipe it into this utility and inspect. In the past
> I've had to resort to binary chops to solve this: copy source.rb to x.rb and
> remove chunks of method definitions until I find the offending one. This is
> painful.
>
> As an alternative: the existing Ruby parser could be modified to spit out a
> warning whenever it sees non-standard nesting, e.g. "end at line <x> doesn't
> align with start of block/method at line <y>". It only need do this for an
> 'end' which is at the start of a line.
>
> Regards,
>
> Brian.

I use Arachono Ruby IDE. Its editor has a feature whereby I can select
a number of lines to comment out or uncomment the lines. This makes
finding the missing end fairly easier.

I find python indentation much harder to read. For my use, I rather
stick with the "end"s.